I see that there was a thread about Batman Begins and I just recently re-watched The Prestige so it decided to spark my wanting to discuss this topic and that is Chris Nolan and way vision for both movies.

I love both Batman Begins and The Prestige. Both are very great movies with a great story and superb acting. I thought Batman Begins was the best movie of that year. But one thing I thought that was somewhat bothered me was the way Chris Nolan constantly does flashbacks.

For both movies, there really is just one linear story to follow but throughout the first act of both movies and sometimes even later, he would branch it off to very short flashback sequences without announcing that it is a flashback. And he this alot throughout the movie to show off various different flashback moments at different times throughout the character's life for story telling purposes. He does it in a way that is not really that hard to follow because it is very consistent with the things that are currently going on in the movie BUT it jumps back and forth a bit too much that I'm sure some will find it hard to follow.

I pay attention to movies enough to find it NOT hard to follow and know whats going on but I prefer the movie to stay linear or if there are flashback sequences, I prefer just one moment instead of a whole bunch that come at whatever moment. Does anyone else feel the same way?

It is not so bad in Batman Begins but in the Prestige, it happens ALOT.

It had to happen in order to explain the back story. I think it's a much better device than when the characters just explain what happened.Also you get that "AHHH" moment effect with the character after the flashbacks when they finally realize what was going on.

Thats one of the reasons I loved The Prestige... I hate linear stuff.
It wasn't that great but the editing... Awesome.
I don't see a movie to "get" or "follow" it by the way, just to get sucked into the world/atmosphere presented.
Although there is no movie of Mr Nolan in my Top 10, he's still probably one of the best three directors currently.

I love Nolan's style. It feels a bit gritty and a lot of it is handheld and I like that look.